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YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

bbc.com

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Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#101

Post by eponeponepon »

sithadmin wrote: post #59
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always intriguing to see how people justify grossly unethical behavior to themselves. I don't think the issue is your disservice to higher education in general or grade systems as a whole, but to your customers, who never receive the education they were meant to, and that they paid for.

Many of my customers could barely compose a cogent e-mail. In most cases I was left wondering how they could possibly be admitted at whatever school they were at. Sure, my assessment of my customers was limited to a few back-and-forth e-mail exchanges, but I was usually left with the impression that they were enrolled at a school they didn't 'deserve' to be at. Further, you're just completely discounting the agency o…

Sorry, but you can't claim that they both knew exactly what they were doing and that they were (forgive my paraphrasing) too stupid for it to matter.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#102

Post by eecsninja »

s17n wrote: post #46
misterbowfinger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Morally this is wrong since cheating hurts everyone in education. Going to slap a big "NOPE" to this bit. It's the school's responsibility to educate and assess students, and therefore it's their job to reduce cheating. IMHO, if it's really easy to cheat on a test (mostly rote memorization), then students SHOULD cheat. It's a bad test and and insanely huge waste of everyone's time and money.

That's like saying "stealing isn't morally wrong - inventory control is retailers' responsibility and therefore it's their job to reduce loss".

Academic cheating is NOT morally wrong in a general sense.

We only think it is because it's drilled into us from a young age by the educational system. But there's really no equivalent of "cheating" in real world industries where it's the results that matter. e.g. nobody cares if you took wrote the software yourself or got it from someone else's library, as long as the software product works.

If cheating happens, it is the responsibility of: 1) schools to deal with that accordingly (withhold degrees according to pre-written rules, etc) 2) employers to interview people instead of looking at credentials (something they should be doing anyway).

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#103

Post by Fomite »

chrisseaton wrote: post #38
openasocket wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can? I didn't see anything about that in the article. I've got no clue how you would pull that off

https://uk.edubirdie.com/thesis-writing

"Besides, they are aware of the expectations of the high school professors and know what can impress them."

They claim they can write a PhD thesis, but they can't check their own prose.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#104

Post by Fomite »

sithadmin wrote: post #17
chrisseaton wrote: post #9

I don't understand how this works. Surely you lecturers are going to know your unique voice, your skill level and your opinions and a random essay by someone else is not going to be passable as your own. Plus don't you have to discuss in seminars essays that you submit? Won't it become apparent that it's not your work when you can't defend it? Plus where do they find people skilled in the particular curriculums of ev…

>Surely you lecturers are going to know your unique voice, your skill level and your opinions and a random essay by someone else is not going to be passable as your own. In the US, the bulk of cheaters buying academic papers are in huge class sections where a majority of grading is divvied up between graduate assistants. Even if the professor strongly suspects that a student turns in a paper that isn't their own work…

Indeed, on occasion TAs are deliberately rotated, which has benefits, but does mean it will take them a long time to learn your "voice".

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#105

Post by Something1234 »

Wohlf wrote: post #92
matz1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>cheating hurts everyone. Not the paper writers and some of the students who can benefit from it.

One of the basic foundations of economics is competitive advantage. No one makes everything themselves, they defer to specialists. I don't see why writing papers should be any different, considering most of the work is not about technical competence, it's about proper formatting and writing skills. If scientists could spend all their time performing experiments, statisticians did all the statistics, and technical wri…

"Specialization is for insects.” ~ Robert Anson Heinlein

Your viewpoint is basically that we should overspecialize. I believe that the more diverse skills a person has. The better they are. Would you ask a romance author to write a highly technical piece? You wouldn't.

Papers help with communication. Communication is a skill that a lot of people lack.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#106

Post by logfromblammo »

sithadmin wrote: post #3

I paid my rent and living expenses when pursuing my Masters degree by writing papers for services that helped undergrads cheat on class/term papers. I don't regret it at all. It helped me become a faster, more efficient author, and in my experience, the sort of student that would pay someone else to buy a paper will end up failing out one way or another regardless. I knew people that paid for papers in undergrand, an…

That makes sense.

It is probably in the interests of someone with a Master degree to devalue all Bachelor degrees.

But it is also perfectly understandable that those with Bachelor degrees who actually earned them would be super pissed at you for helping a bunch of useless idiots achieve exactly the same institutional recognition, but without the same level of actual mastery, thereby ensuring that they would all have to pass a stupid bozo filter in every job interview for the rest of their lives.

Please try to regret what you have done, just a little bit.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#107

Post by walshemj »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #99
s17n wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "stealing isn't morally wrong - inventory control is retailers' responsibility and therefore it's their job to reduce loss".

I don't think the two are comparable. Cheating on a test doesn't "take" anything of intrinsic value from another person, stealing does. Cheating hurts no one. You can argue that cheating puts you ahead of students that work in good faith, systemically, though it's still a bit different. Stealing has implied intent of taking something away from someone, cheating doesn't. You're just trying to get better grades.

devalues the value of the qualifications and hurts those that didn't cheat.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#108

Post by eecsninja »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #99
s17n wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "stealing isn't morally wrong - inventory control is retailers' responsibility and therefore it's their job to reduce loss".

I don't think the two are comparable. Cheating on a test doesn't "take" anything of intrinsic value from another person, stealing does. Cheating hurts no one. You can argue that cheating puts you ahead of students that work in good faith, systemically, though it's still a bit different. Stealing has implied intent of taking something away from someone, cheating doesn't. You're just trying to get better grades.

Agreed 100%.

We only think cheating is only "wrong" because it goes against how the people who set up the educational system intend for it to work, e.g. they are short circuiting the system. It has no counterpart in the real world, and cannot be compared to murder and theft. If it were up to me, I'd make the school system results-only -- i.e. it's about how well you can build a project and explain it, not how well you can write up answers.

People who think otherwise need to wake up from their K-12-university programming.

And in case anyone thinks I'm an uneducated redneck, I am an Asian American overachiever with two engineering degrees from world-renowned universities.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#109

Post by djhworld »

Discussions about cheating aside, I find it hilarious watching these YouTube influencers dropping these ads right in the middle of their videos without even a hint of remorse. I mean, I get it, they want to make money, but still.

It reminds me of the days when some YouTubers would promote/endorse products without specifically saying they were paid to do so. Or worse, promoting products for gambling sites that they had business interests in.

It's interesting to see all this play out, it almost feels like it's the wild west on YT right now. Every time the regulators try to come in and enforce some policy, people still find the loopholes to create a quick buck.

Re: YouTube Stars Being Paid to Sell Academic Cheating

#110

Post by walshemj »

eanzenberg wrote: post #62
majormajor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to be able to identify the best of the best? That's the fundamental question here - if that's a useful thing for society, to have credentials that distinguish beyond "did well in high school," then you don't want grade inflation. And if you don't - you could make a solid case that the extreme ends of those skills may not be that useful in general outside of academia - than do Harvard et al need nearly as…

Peer group matters. Being bottom 10% at Harvard is quite different than being bottom 10% at Boston University (no offense).

Ah so the us veriosn of the "gentleman's" degree - a third from Oxbridge in the UK
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